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Title

Raw Read Count Expression Data for ND Chu et al 2014

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Description

Total raw read count expression data from Nucella lapillus from the accompanying publication. This file was created by eXpress (http://bio.math.berkeley.edu/eXpress/) for analysis in DEseq2. The sample names are as in the publication. Each row represents a transcript, as assembled in Trinity (see publication for transcriptome assembly accession; http://trinityrnaseq.sourceforge.net/). Experimental snails were collected from near Nahant, Massachusetts, USA.

AbstractThermal stress and predation risk have profound effects on rocky shore organisms, triggering changes in their feeding behaviour, morphology and metabolism. Studies of thermal stress have shown that underpinning such changes in several intertidal species are specific shifts in gene and protein expression (e.g. upregulation of heat-shock proteins). But relatively few studies have examined genetic responses to predation risk. Here, we use next-generation RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to examine the transcriptomic (mRNA) response of the snail Nucella lapillus to thermal stress and predation risk. We found that like other intertidal species, N. lapillus displays a pronounced genetic response to thermal stress by upregulating many heat-shock proteins and other molecular chaperones. In contrast, the presence of a crab predator (Carcinus maenas) triggered few significant changes in gene expression in our experiment, and this response showed no significant overlap with the snail's response to thermal stress. These different gene expression profiles suggest that thermal stress and predation risk could pose distinct and potentially additive challenges for N. lapillus and that genetic responses to biotic stresses such as predation risk might be more complex and less uniform across species than genetic responses to abiotic stresses such as thermal stress.